SpaceX just flew its fastest Dragon astronaut trip to the space station ever

The fastest Dragon astronauts trip yet was set by the company.

The shortest flight time for a crewed flight since the beginning of the year was 16 hours for the four Crew-4 astronauts that were sent to the International Space Station on Wednesday.

Steve Stitch, NASA's Commercial Crew Program manager, told reporters after the launch that it was the fastest launch they had done.

The Crew Dragon capsule was launched by the Falcon 9 rocket at 3:52 a.m. The Kennedy Space Center is in Florida. The astronauts docked at the space station at 7:37 p.m. The sun rises at 2337 GMT. 15 hours and 45 minutes is the total flight time.

There are amazing launch photos of the Crew-4 astronauts.

For comparison, the first crewed flight for NASA, the Demo-2 mission in May 2020 took 19 hours to reach the station, while the latest Crew3 flight took nearly a full day.

Jessica Jensen, the vice president of customer operations and integration, said that it was a little bit of luck that the flight was not delayed. It isn't really that we changed anything, it's just the orbital mechanics of where the ISS is and where it's coming over Florida.

The Crew-4 mission launched three NASA astronauts and one European Space Agency astronauts to the space station to begin a six-month mission. The crew of the Crew Dragon, which was called Freedom, included the commander, pilot, mission specialist, and mission specialist from the European Space Agency.

NASA officials said getting the Dragon crew docked and settled in swiftly was a bonus because it came just ahead of a spacewalk by two Russian cosmonauts.

Stitch said that the short rendezvous was favorable for them.

The fastest flight to the station was 800-313-5780 800-313-5780 800-313-5780 800-313-5780 800-313-5780 800-313-5780 800-313-5780 800-313-5780 800-313-5780 800-313-5780 800-313-5780 800-313-5780 800-313-5780 800-313-5780 800-313-5780 800-313-5780 800-313-5780 800-313-5780 800-313-5780 800-313-5780 800-313-5780 800-313-5780 800-313-5780 800-313-5780 800-313-5780 800-313-5780 800-313-5780 800-313-5780 800-313-5780 800-313-5780 800-313-5780 800-313-5780 800-313-5780 800-313-5780 800-313-5780 800-313-5780 800-313-5780 800-313-5780 800-313-5780 800-313-5780 800-313-5780 800-313-5780 800-313-5780 800-313-5780 800-313-5780 800-313-5780 800-313-5780 800-313-5780 800-313-5780 800-313-5780 800-313-5780 The Guinness World Record for the fastest time to the station with a 3-hour, 3-minute trip in October 2020 is still held by Russia's Soyuz spaceship.

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